On Faith: Hume Biased, Not Media
Minneapolis, MN (January 13, 2006) - As a regularly featured blogger on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" blog, Dr. Aseem Shukla, member of HAF's Board of Directors, has the opportunity to provide a Hindu viewpoint on various issues. Below is Dr. Shukla's latest blog. Please post your comments directly on the "On Faith" site by
clicking here.
Q: Is there widespread media bias against Christianity? Against evangelicals such as Brit Hume and Sarah Palin? Against public figures who speak openly and directly about their faith? Against people who believe as you do?
Brit Hume used the airways to proffer a latest version of Christian exceptionalism, and Fox News became an apt vehicle to allow millions to hear the basic dogma of evangelical Christianity: there is only one Truth, and only Jesus Christ can take you there. Left unsaid--"everyone else is doomed to hell."
Hume's words, rendered during an ostensibly intellectual discussion on television, are so commonly heard by people of Dharma faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism, they fail even to emote anymore. Accosted too often by wandering proselytizers and evangelical mercenaries resorting to every trick known to man to convince me of my Hindu religion's failures and to convert, I am deaf to the polemics of religious superiority.
But sometimes, it is important to listen to the Hume variety of blatant triumphalism, if for no other reason but to affirm again the diametric polarity of our religious life. While efforts such as this On Faith project endeavor to foster an intelligent dialogue on religious life to promote understanding, how far can we truly engage those who subscribe to Hume's views?
Where pluralism is dead, we are consigned to shout against closed minds. Amazing that evangelicals fail to recognize that their monopolistic view of only their religion's legitimacy shares more with the mullahs of Iran or Saudi Arabia than with the democratic ideals our Founding Fathers established here.
Leave aside the fatuous logic--did the Christian faith protect Mark Sanford, John Edwards or Ted Haggard from errant ways? But Hume's attempt to turn criticism into an anti-Christian attack is even more ludicrous.
We criticize Hume not for his Christian faith, but for his very un-Christian judgment of another's religious beliefs. We criticize Hume for in refusing to acknowledge his error, he seeks to compound it by claiming the mantle of victimhood. Christ and Christianity do not "stir people up," but the distortion of a prophet's message into another display of arrogant chauvinism does.
The media has its biases, certainly, but Hume has made his bias against all those not sharing his Christian faith crystal clear
Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or Hindu American Foundation.